Kickstarter

… a third hand that can fit into a PanaVise base. This one is different in that it has these metal bits sticking out that you can use to hold SMD components or probes and you can mount several clamps at right angles.

If you’re in to Retro computers, then this campaign allows you to upgrade a Commodore 64 chassis with a Raspberry Pi and joystick and keyboard PCB. It is a decent non-destructive way of mounting everything into an old chassis.

IndieGoGo

The Vinci is another motion sensing board that has a Cortex-M0, 6 DOF accelerometer, SD and LiPo battery management. There’s also a stacking header allowing you to add on modules, but they only have the one which is a GPS module. However, it is a little expensive at 99 euros.

CrowdSupply

ERASynth had gone live, which is an SDR with on-board ESP8266 and Atmel ATSAM2X8 MCU. There’s two models; The ERASynth which operates between 10MHz and 6GHZ and the plus which operates from 350kHz to 15GHz. You can access via USB or WiFi and also has a 10MHz reference signal input option.

Others

If you really want to get into some hacking, then you can now download the OpenSoC based RISC-V for a variety of FPGAs. They offer the 32bit E31 and 64bit E51 Coreplexes which can be downloaded onto most FPGAs such as the Digilent Arty board. However, to get it, you’ll need to sign a very lengthy “Developer Program Agreement”, which according to LinuxGizmos has the words “confidential” or “confidentiality” mentioned 31 times.

Hot on the heels of Google’s Assistant announcement have launched AIY Projects with the goal to make human to machine interactions more like human to human. They’re starting to release a bunch of reference kits that can be used to replace buttons, dials and displays, or replace smartphone apps controlling devices. The first reference design is the Google Voice kit, which gives you everything you need, minus the Pi, to connect to Google Voice. If you want to get one free, then pick up the latest MagPi magazine.

Yeah, I know how that’s going to go down. It’ll be a repeat of the Pi Zero incident.

And The Banana Pi guys have released yet another board to confuse the heck out of us all. This one is called the “Banana Pi M2+ with H2+ instead of H3”. I know, it’s a long name, but we’re talking about marketing here and you can’t argue with that.

The only difference is that this one has… er… well… an H2+ instead of H3 SoC.

If you’re really desperate to have the best of both world’s, then the VolksPC guys have released the VolksPC O/S which runs both Debian and Android Marshmallow at the same time on your ODROID-C2. It’ll cost you $15 US, but a pretty good thing if you get sick of dual-booting.

Tindie

Like this interactive ruler, with on-board buttons, simulated logic gates, flip-flops, counters and LEDs all running off a standard CR2032 battery. Pretty cool if you want to experiment with basic logic gates.

This small board is actually really cool. It allows you to insert two SD cards and write encrypted data to both. It means that you need both SD cards to read the data. This is useful in the situation where you want to have a very simple reliable way of protecting sensitive data. No passwords are required, but simply relies on both SD cards being physically present.

AdaFruit, Seeed, SparkFun, DFRobot, DigiKey

Over at ITead they have a 7″ TFT Nextion HMI in stock, which is a smart display designed to take out all the hard work of building an interactive touch display. Contains SD card, RTC, 32MB of flash and a 7″ 800×480 TFT touch display.

Nice to see more SAMD21 based products hitting the shelves. AdaFruit have an Arduino compatible board using the SAMD21G18 giving you an expanded 25 GPIOs, (which are 3.3 volt logic levels), 2MB SPI flash and running off a 7-9 volt DC supply. Has the UF2 bootloader installed, so it presents itself as a plain USB storage device. Just copy a file over to program.

SparkFun are making a big Spectacle with this next one. They are a series of boards based on the SAMD21 MCU and allow easy connectivity using a TRRS cable to various modules. The “Director Board” controls all the action and connects to modules such as the “Inertia”, “Motion”, “Audio”, “Button” and “Light” boards. Another good option if you want to get into the SAMD21.

This first Weeky Roundup of the year and we're already seeing lots of new goodies from SBCs, to WiFi modules, but really a tonne of new SBCs. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #62: New Maker Products // News→

This week's Weekly Roundup, which hasn't really been weekly for the past month, we're seeing a fair amount of retro kit, FPGAs and SBCs. Basically a whole lot of stuff that is really cool that you didn't know you needed. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #61: New Maker Products // News→

This week's Weekly Roundup is actually a little short, but we have FPGAs, SBCs and other cool things I've found in my travels on the interwebs. Continue reading Weekly Roundup #60: New Maker Products // News→

An SBC that's not really an SBC. Based on the NationalChip GX6605S, it runs a tiny Linux with a very small component count, but is it too cool to be usable? Continue reading The C-Sky SBC: Pi in the Sky? // Review→

In this review I take a look at one of the newer members of the Khadas family; The Khadas Edge and Khadas Captain. This board has some pretty interesting power management but, unfortunately, I saw the return of the magic smoke genie. Continue reading The Khadas Edge: A new captain

The LattePanda Alpha SBC is a bit of a beast not only in horse power, but in price. In this video I look at benchmarks on Windows, Linux and OSX and give my perspective on why LattePanda made a big mistake. Continue reading LattePanda Alpha: The big mistake? // Review→

This quick project shows you how to build an MQTT controlled RGB LED matrix panel in under 30 minutes, but I reckon it should take you a lot less. Continue reading Build an MQTT based RGB LED panel! // Project→

Do you want to be able to send an SMS over 20kms without using a mobile phone network? Here's one small project you can knock up in less than a day allowing you to send an SMS over LoRa. Continue reading SMS over LoRa: Long distance SMS without 4G //

If you're a fan of GoLang then your options are limited in the embedded world. So, here's a couple of options for you with a working bare metal example for an STM32 MCU written entirely in Go. Continue reading Running GoLang on an STM32 MCU. A quick tutorial.→

This is the second part of my video on building a simple PCB using EasyEDA. This time we'll be taking a look at how to use a solder stencil, placing SMD components, soldering using kitchen equipment and how to fix up your mistakes. Continue reading Make a PCB from scratch

A follow-up to my video tutorial: "Program an Atmel SAM without an IDE". I've created a Docker container on GitHub with a complete ASF build chain. Ready to go. Go for it! Continue reading Atmel Software Framework and build chain in a Docker container→

A bit of a different mailbag this week. Containing a lot of bits and pieces for upcoming projects and other odds and ends. Continue reading MickMake Mail #30: Gakken, JLCPCB, wicking and skulls // News→